Cursed Life
by Mandy of the Amoeba
Summary: Riff and Magenta were both cursed from the start. A short little piece about their childhood.


A/N: Well, I'm in a production of Antigone at the moment, and every once in a while, a few lines of it will stick out to me and I'll think "Ooh...that could be a good idea for a fic." So, I plan on taking a few lines here and there and writing fics based off of them. Not all of the fics will be RHPS, but this first one is. Enjoy!

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_"As they wasted away,  
They lamented their unhappy fate  
That they were doomed to be born  
Of a mother cursed in her marriage."_  
..._Antigone_

He had been diseased when he was born, sickly and weak and pale. His mother was told that he likely wouldn't live more than a year, and if he did, he would probably grow up with physical problems. Between her drug use and the abuse she received at the hand of his father, she had really expected nothing less. So she named him Riff Raff, not caring about the ridicule he would certainly receive if he did live past his infancy. If there hadn't been laws against abandonment, she probably would have left him in the gutter with the rest of the refuse.

He had lived in spite of what the doctors had said, even with a neglectful mother and a father disgusted with his very existence. He wouldn't remember his father, anyway; by the time he was two, another man had come into the house, and another child was on the way. This baby was born with hair as red as lust; red was a color that seldom naturally occured among the moonlight and shadow people of Transexual. This rare ruby of a child was named Magenta.

Even with her beauty, Magenta was not treated much better than her unwanted brother. Her father doted on her for a short while, but he soon grew bored with both the child and her mother. Her and Riff Raff's shared childhood was one of a slew of stepfathers passing through the house as their mother became involved in failed marriage after failed marriage. School became their only escape from a miserable home life. Riff Raff was intelligent and had the ability to think quickly on his feet. In spite of the doomed prophecies made by the physicians at his birth and the stigma of his own name, he was at the top of his class academically. His beautiful sister was not as intellectual, but she had something that he didn't: popularity. In her younger years, before the bitter taste of envy began to taint the lips of her peers, everyone loved her. It wasn't until they grew older that she began to lose her social standing. Females began to realize that she was drawing all the attention; at the same time, males began to understand that she was nothing more than a beautiful piece of white trash. They objectified her, treating her as nothing more than cheap eye candy. It was something she couldn't understand; she had done nothing to them. But her older half-brother understood perfectly, and he hated her classmates for it. He saw her for the goddess that she was, and a pit of rage boiled up inside of him each time he saw a leer cast in her direction or heard a crude comment spouted off the lips of some teenage boy.

It was one of their many stepfathers who finally caused that rage to overflow. Magenta was fifteen and growing more desirable with each passing day. Riff Raff was as aware of his half-sister's sex appeal as any other hot-blooded Transylvanian, but he would not let himself act upon his desires. It was not the relationship between them that bothered him; incest was frowned upon, but it was not entirely unheard of in the lower classes. Riff's case, in particular, would be slightly more forgivable than some others; his childhood illness had left him unable to father children, so there could be no danger of inbred offspring. No, it was not the incest that bothered Riff; it was the thought that Magenta might feel as objectified by him as she did by others. So, in spite of his feelings for her, he kept his desire to himself.

Their stepfather was not so considerate. He had been with their mother a mere three months before the night he moved in on her redhaired daughter. Riff Raff was in the room he shared with his sister, studying; their mother was passed out in her own bedroom, probably a result of drugs or alcohol or a mix of the two. Magenta was alone in the kitchen when their stepfather cornered her. At first, she was silent, trying to shrug off his hands as they groped at her breasts and trailed along her waist. She began to voice her protests in muffled cries when his mouth began to press harshly against her own ruby lips.

In the silence of his room, Riff Raff looked up from his book at the sound of his sister's distressed voice. Marking his page, he got up and followed the sound into the kitchen with a frown. It took a moment for the image he was seeing to sink in; Magenta was backed against the counter by their stepfather, who had one of his arms around her, pinning both her arms to her sides while the other hand had slid down the front of her skirt. Shocked, Riff stood in the doorway and stared; then, slowly, that pit of rage in his heart erupted into a blinding, white hot explosion of fury. Before he knew what he was doing, he strode forward and grabbed the older man by the shoulder, spinning him around. Surprise didn't even have time to register before Riff knocked him out cold with a well-placed fist to the jaw.

For a moment, stunned silence filled the room as brother and sister stared at the fallen body. Then Magenta's face crumpled, and she covered it with both her hands as a frightened sob escape from her lips. Stepping over the body of their stepfather, Riff Raff took her in his arms, holding her close and stroking her hair as she cried against his chest. He felt his heart aching for her, and tears pricked at his own eyes. He wanted to do something, anything to comfort her and make her realize that he loved her and wouldn't let any harm come to her. Without thinking, he drew away from her enough to tilt her chin up towards him and kissed her lips softly, putting every ounce of tenderness and compassion he had into the action.

Startled, she stopped crying when his lips met her own. It was a short kiss; he was the one who pulled away, not trusting himself to keep his self control after he had tasted her sweet flesh. For a moment, she gazed up a him wonderingly, unsure of how to react. There was nothing but love and empathy for her in his clear blue eyes. Wordlessly, she wrapped her arms around his neck and lay her head back down on his shoulder, resting in the comfort of his embrace.

"We have to get out of here, 'Genta," he murmured into her hair.

"But where vill ve go?" she asked without lifting her head, her words tainted by a slight speech impediment she had been born with.

"Somewhere," he replied, drawing away from her. Taking her hand, he led her into their bedroom so they could begin packing their things.

They ran away before their stepfather regained consciousness that night and slept in the back doorway of a restaurant, next to a dumpster. The next morning, they went off in search of a more permanent place to stay, somewhere that wouldn't ask questions as to why two teenagers were wandering around alone in the city. As fate would have it, they stumbled upon an employment offer at the palace, the home of Transexual's queen and her spoiled son. The people in charge of hiring didn't care that the applicants were too young to even be finished with their schooling; all that mattered was that they were willing to work cheaply.

So the pair entered a life of servitude, wasting away slowly underneath the strain. One unwanted and one wanted far too much, they had been doomed from the start to have no place in society. They found solace only in each other's arms, and each clung desperately to the other for the only real love either had ever known.


End file.
